Promotional Information

Explores the tension between individual rights and cultural autonomy promised in American law, on the one hand, and the country's need to build unity and national identity through institutions and by promoting certain values.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: E Pluribus Unum?
Race and Ethnicity
Native Americans, Land, and Law
Trouble in Paradise: Native Hawaiian and Puerto Rican Sovereignty
African Americans: The Fight for Justice and Equality
Immigration: Latinos and Law
Religion
Religious Belief and Practice: The Mormons
Religious Belief and Practice: The Amish
The Culture Wars in American Schools
Religion and the Use of Illicit Drugs: The Rastafari and the Native American Church
Gender
Women's Nature, Women's Lives, Women's Rights
Family Values: Gays and Marriage
Community and Citizenship
Fighting Prejudice: Persons with Disabilities and Homeless Persons
100 Percent American: Who Qualifies in a National Emergency? Japanese Americans and the Law
Cultural Pluralism and the Rule of Law Post-9/11
Selected Bibliography
Index

About the Author

JILL NORGREN is Professor Emeritus of Government at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. Her research has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, NEH, the ACLS, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. She has also published (with Petra T. Shattuck) Partial Justice: Federal Indian Law in a Liberal Constitutional System: The Cherokee Cases and a biography of pioneering American lawyer and presidential candidate Belva Lockwood. She is currently writing on the topics of Native American law and the legal treatment of women.

SERENA NANDA is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is the author (with Rich Warms) o fCultural Anthropology, a widely used undergraduate text now in its 9th edition, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India and Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations and Forty Perfect New York Days: Walks and Rambles in and around the City. Her current work is on the politics of cultural identity.

Reviews

As in previous editions, the central theme of this work concerns the negotiations between the law and the many subcultures that make up US society. The authors present the material thematically. They address issues of race and ethnicity by looking at Native Americans and land issues, issues of Native Hawaiian and Puerto Rican sovereignty, the struggle for African American civil rights, and Latino immigration. Religion is discussed as it relates to legal struggles of the Mormons and the Amish to define their own ways of life, the culture wars in American Schools, and Rastafarian and Native American ritual use of illicit drugs. Addressing gender, two chapters discuss women's rights and gay marriage. A final section on community and citizenship discusses anti-discrimination campaigns by people with disabilities and homeless people, Japanese internment, and the antagonistic relationship between cultural pluralism and the war on terror.
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